The Nobel Peace Prize Is A Sick Joke
Ben Barbour
It’s very simple. The Nobel Peace Prize is just like most other awards. Sometimes its distributors get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. The people that win awards do not win them based off of objective scorecards about morality. They win these awards based off of media narratives.
The Nobel Peace Prize was founded in 1901 by Alfred Nobel, an arms manufacturer. His family factory first gained notoriety for producing weapons for the Crimean War of 1853-1856. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and various other powerful explosives. These explosives were used to devastate people in conflicts such as the Spanish-American War.
After Nobel’s brother died, because of a journalistic error, the public believed that Alfred Nobel had died. In his obituary, he was portrayed as an amoral businessman who made millions of dollars off of the deaths of others. His critics declared that “the merchant of death is dead” and that Alfred Nobel “became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before.”
According to Live Science, this discovery shocked Nobel, and to improve his legacy, “one year before he died in 1896, Nobel signed his last will and testament, which set aside the majority of his vast estate to establish the five Nobel Prizes, including one awarded for the pursuit of peace.” This may very well have been a genuine act, but it is important to draw parallels between the origin of the award and its not so peaceful recipients. Here are three of the Nobel Peace Prize winners that turned out to be war criminals.
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger won the award in 1973 for his “efforts” to conclude the Vietnam War. What a joke. In 1968, Kissinger helped tank President Johnson’s peace talks on behalf of the Nixon campaign for political gain. Kissinger helped orchestrate the secret bombing of Cambodia. These bombing operations were known as Operation Menu and Operation Freedom Deal.
The carpet bombing of Cambodia led to the deaths of 10,000s, if not 100,000s, of Cambodian civilians. The total death count has been estimated to be as high as 500,000 (most estimates range between 150,000-300,000 deaths). The vast majority of these deaths are considered to be civilians because of the indiscriminate nature of the carpet bombing. These bombings also destabilized Cambodia and allowed for the rise of the genocidal ruler, Pol-Pot. The bombing campaign was so gratuitous that it made Congress pass the War Powers Resolution in 1973, in an attempt to curb the bombing campaign.
With all of that being said, Kissinger still won the award for his role in the Paris Peace Accords. The peace talks began in 1968, the same year that Kissinger undermined the process to win an election for Nixon. After the agreement was signed in January 1973, it lasted less than two months before full-scale war broke out again in March 1973.
After winning the award, Henry Kissinger then proceeded to indirectly back Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia. This was done primarily as a way to put pressure on the former North Vietnamese Army. Pol-Pot’s genocide killed between 1.5-2 million people (20%-25% of Cambodia’s population).
Henry Kissinger’s crimes are not limited to Vietnam. He has a long bloody history in Latin America as well. Kissinger was a major proponent of Operation Condor. The highly secretive US-backed campaign enabled South American dictators to kill an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 people. It also led to political imprisonments of over 400,000 people. Transcripts of telephone conversations reveal that after President Allende’s election in 1970, Kissinger began plotting a coup with CIA director Richard Helm. After the 1973 coup in Chile, Kissinger, as Secretary of State, formalized close ties between Pinochet and the United States.
For years to come, Kissinger proceeded to have close ties with the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who killed 1000s of his political opponents and imprisoned and tortured 10,000s more. Pinochet popularized death flights: a practice where people’s stomachs were cut open before they were tossed out of planes into the ocean.
Kissinger also backed Argentina’s military dictatorship. He was buddy-buddy with Jorge Videla, a dictator who disappeared an estimated 30,000 political dissidents. Videla also tortured political opponents and their families at secret concentration camps. Kissinger encouraged all of this brutality and praised the dictatorship for stamping out “terrorism.”
Henry Kissinger’s war crimes are far too numerous to neatly fit into one article. For a better understanding of his many war crimes that I left out, I recommend reading The Trail of Henry Kissinger.
Barack Obama
In 2009, Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.” Before digging into Obama’s war crimes, I would like to add a few caveats. Obama is not exactly like Kissinger.
On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama did claim that he would meet with adversaries without preconditions. Furthermore, he followed through on this promise in two major ways. He successfully negotiated the Iran Deal and lifted the embargo on Cuba. These are not accomplishments that should be brushed aside. That being said, Obama’s diplomatic achievements are overshadowed by his imperialist failures. I also blame most of Obama’s failures on a lack of conviction in his values and not on any Machiavellian schemes. Most of Obama’s bad foreign policy decisions can be traced back to him getting rolled by people in the military industrial complex establishment like his CIA director John O. Brennan.
Barack Obama’s most reprehensible policy was his support of the Saudi Arabian-fueled genocide in Yemen. Obama authorized mid-air refueling to refuel Saudi bombers on average twice per day and he set up a Joint Planning Cell to give Saudi intelligence and logistical support to bomb Yemen.
Obama also approved 10s of billions in arms sales to Saudi Arabia that were used to devastate Yemen’s infrastructure and throw the country into a mass famine.
In 2016 alone, Obama’s policies led to the deaths of 63,000 Yemeni children. They died from preventable causes overwhelmingly linked to malnutrition. These deaths were caused by the Saudi bombing campaign and the de-facto blockade of humanitarian aid.
For example, Saudi Arabia, with US backing, bombed the cranes at the port of Hodeidah in August 2015. 70% of all humanitarian assistance to Yemen is channeled through Hodeidah. Bombing the cranes of the major port in this area is a war crime.
In fact, humanitarian aid groups warned that the US-backed August 2015 bombings would lead to mass child death in Yemen. The Obama administration’s support and aid of these siege warfare tactics was an abhorrent moral failure. It is highly unlikely that the war in Yemen would have even been possible without US support. Neither Saudi Arabia or the UAE had the ability to wage a sustained bombing campaign without outside support from a major imperialist power like the United States.
Barack Obama also authorized Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA train-and-equip program in Syria. The multi-billion-dollar program armed and trained fighters to topple Assad. I personally believe that the Syrian conflict is not black and white. There is a lot of blame to go around. In my opinion, both pro-Assad and anti-Assad writers do not tell the entire complex story. Over half a dozen countries helped fuel the proxy war for different reasons, and Assad himself is not simply a victim of Western imperialism.
Those caveats aside, it is very clear that Timber Sycamore was a terrible idea that led to textbook mutual escalation that broke open the Syrian conflict further and might well be the reason that 100,000s more Syrians died. Billions of dollars were poured into “vetted” rebel groups. Many of these groups turned out to be Salafi jihadist groups and Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups that carried out ethnic murder and various other war crimes.
Among these groups that received either training or weapons were Ahrar al Sham, Jaysh al Islam, and Nour al-Din al-Zenki, all of whom have been accused of war crimes as per Amnesty International. The massive delivery of BGM-71 TOWs via Timber Sycamore is also sometimes cited (in my opinion correctly) as the policy that caused Russia to intervene in Syria. This is the aforementioned textbook case of mutual escalation.
Obama also set up a worldwide drone program that Noam Chomsky called “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.” A study done in Afghanistan over a six-month period found that 90% of people killed in US drone strikes were not the intended targets. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is one resource that has documented the high civilian casualty rate that occurred under Obama’s drone program (and continued and oftentimes increased under Trump’s administration).
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for “her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.” She is currently the State Counsellor (equivalent of prime minister) of Myanmar. State Counsellor Suu Kyi just oversaw one of the largest violent ethnic cleansing projects of the 21st century. It turns out that she fought for human rights and democracy…unless you are a Rohingya Muslim.
The crackdown on the Rohingya that Suu Kyi oversaw led to a conservative death toll of 10,000 Rohingya. The Myanmar military burned children alive and raped 1000s of Rohingya women. Since 2015, over 900,000 Rohingya have had to flee from Myanmar, mostly into neighboring Bangladesh.
There have been claims that the ethnic cleansing project may have been a response to violent Rohingya extremist groups that operated in the Rakhine State area of Myanmar. I find this to be plausible given the history of oppression that Rohingya faced and their subsequent insurrections dating back over a half a century.
However, this certainly does not excuse hacking Rohingya civilians to death with machetes (similar to what the Hutus did to the Tutsis in the Rwandan genocide)
State Counsellor Suu Kyi denied that an ethnic cleansing project was taking place and she backed the military crackdown. She gave cover for the war criminals in her military by stating “there have been allegations and counter-allegations…We have to listen to all of them.”
Suu Kyi proceeded to be the figurehead that attacked the International Criminal Court investigations into Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing project as “not in accordance with international law.” She proceeded to run interference for her military’s war crimes at the UN.
To be clear, as I alluded to above, not all Rohingya are innocent in the conflict. There are credible reports that tie some of the more extremist groups in Rakhine State to outside Saudi funding. But it is a false equivalency used by ethnic cleansing apologists to conflate all the Rohingya in Myanmar with Al Qaeda. Buddhist nationalists used the (likely) correct allegation that worldwide terrorism sponsor Saudi Arabia was funding a couple of Rohingya groups as an excuse to ethnically cleanse an entire population that is mostly peaceful.
Conclusion
It’s very simple. The Nobel Peace Prize is just like most other awards. Sometimes its distributors get it right and sometimes they get it wrong. The people that win awards do not win them based off of objective score cards about morality. They win these awards based off of media narratives. When the Nobel Peace Prize awarded Martin Luther King Jr. with the award, they got it right. When they awarded Henry Kissinger with the award, they exposed themselves to be clowns of the highest order. Do not take awards like the Nobel Peace Prize seriously. They are popularity contests, where oftentimes those that are popular are actually in favor of abhorrent policies.
Originally published by OneWorld.press
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Excellent report Ben, thank you, and all too sad. They should review these awards in the light of further events and remove them, together with refund of the mega amounts they accrue, and publish the fact.
The award is definitely a meaningless propaganda token, but Ben needs to do the same type of research about MLK. He was another individual (and movement) that we were lied to about. Surprise!
Assange needs to be nominated and the people who are eligible for nominating fall in certain categories. I once tried to encourage my Member of Parliament to nominate 2 Australian military vets who spent their own time and money to defuse unexploded ordnance in Laos. Preventing children from being maimed was not noteworthy. I tried to counteract former German Chancellor Kohl being rewarded for his corrupt regime (I lost our land through his shenanigans). It was probably not me alone who knew what Kohl was behind his mask. Maybe his sons told the Nobel people a tale or two?
The literary prize for Dr. Zhivago/Boris Pasternak was a collusion. And what wins their literary prizes is ‘interesting’. A publisher will make a mint through a prize and therefore will generate many nominations for his/her darling.
Is it possible that the committee might make up for past mistakes by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Julian Assange?
I am sure they will fluff it by giving it to Greta.
I would like to know the answer that after trillions have been spent on all the wrong things if zero carbon is achieved what will be the result and when?
If the rise in carbon now is due to the temperature rise five hundred years ago, will it take another five hundred years to reduce.
If the level of greenhouse gases in the troposphere continues to rise, then the planet will suffer more than the 3 degrees C rise in average temperatures that is already baked in. At four degrees C, the Earth’s human carrying capacity falls to c.1-2 billion, so avoiding the increase will, hopefully, help avert several billion premature and nassty deaths. I would have thought anyone would welcome that.
The assertion that the recent rise in carbon is due to the temperature five hundred years ago is bizarre rubbish. It is due to the release of CO2 and methane, nitrous oxide etc, caused by the industrialisation and economic expansion of the last 200 years, particularly the last forty. And it will take millennia to reverse, thanks to the inertia of that great heat sink, the planets’ oceans.
I am no expert unlike many of the climate change brigade/
However the warming of CO2 is 3% of the total the rest is from solar rays. CO2 heats the planet by 1.5 watts per sq metre whilst there is a net loss at the moment of 8 watts per sq metre due to the reduction of solar rays at the moment.
If you watch Matt Ridley’s YouTube documentary he makes clear that human activity has raised the temperature of the planet but this is a good thing as without that we would now be in an ice age.
Since we are now entering a solar minimum, we will get hotter summers but even colder winters. As far as I can see we are making no provision for that at all.
Certainly our only future is nuclear energy but to meet the zero carbon date of 2060, we will need to be building one and a half or more of nuclear power stations every day.
If you truly believe in what you are saying then we are stuffed.
If you watch Matt Ridley’s (the hero of the Northern Rock Bank disaster, caused by his hard Right economic theories)anything you will be seriously misinformed. Did you know that his family fortune is based in large part on fossil fuel interests? The world does have a heat balance, ordinarily, but at present, thanks to the absorption of re-radiating heat by greenhouse gases in the troposphere, it is out of balance, hence the slowly accumulating heat in the planetary system.
Ninety percent is sequestered in the oceans, the rest in the lithosphere and atmosphere. The total imbalance at present is c. 4 watts/metre2 per second or the equivalent of several Hiroshima sized nuclear explosions per second. We were slowly descending into a new glaciation before industrialisation changed our course. We are near the end of a solar cycle, number 25 I think since serious records began, and the solar minimum talk is mostly just denialist clap-trap. That we are still warming, at what looks like an accelerating rate, at a time when the Sun is relatively quiet, is more evidence for the effects of greenhouse gas concentrations in the troposphere. Nuclear is a waste of time any money-solar, wind, tidal, wave energies plus greater efficiency could do the job, and yes, we are stuffed, in great part thanks to the efforts of hard Right fanatics like Ridley.
Excellent Roger, thank you. This report from South Africa might have some answers as we descend into chaos:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-02-23-a-village-lesson-on-preventing-a-climate-catastrophe/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=80895&tl_period_type=3&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Maverick%20Citizen%20Tuesday%2024%20Feb%202020%20Gathering&utm_content=Maverick%20Citizen%20Tuesday%2024%20Feb%202020%20Gathering+CID_c94154e5baa03f2f82c12887afdd0f4d&utm_source=TouchBasePro&utm_term=A%20village%20lesson%20on%20preventing%20a%20climate%20catastrophe
The Nobel Comittee does not make mistakes. What you call mistakes are intentional. Therefore they can never makeup for them.
Kissinger and Obama are horrible people, but Ben Barbour misses the main function of the modern day Peace Prize.
A more relevant question is for example how did the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons get the prize? The organization must have been groomed by Western powers for more than a decade to its present total propaganda function, so it is reasonable to regard the 2013 Peace Prize as part of this grooming process, to reinforce narratives.
I wrote an article about it a few years ago, (published here on OffGuardian) where I pointed out that Peace Prize on purpose was given to support the narratives behind Western wars and interventions. Malala Yousafzai received the prize in 2011, to support the narrative of US/NATO liberating women, etc, etc
And when Barbour writes “The Nobel Peace Prize is just like most other awards. Sometimes its distributors get it right and sometimes they get it wrong”, he misses the point of for whom is it “the right and wrong” recipients. Suu Kuy was excellent in 1988 when Myanmar was being regime-changed, but is only horrible since she showed independence.
Hey Terje, I wrote this article and you are not wrong. Early on Suu Kyi and her movement were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which for those who don’t know, is a regime change arm of the US that is funded via the State Department. Also, if the Saudis were funding Rohingya extremist groups in 2014-2017, then the CIA might have been tied in behind the scenes (we all know Saudi is often a laundering middleman for the CIA).
I just thought it was to distracting to dive into those particular specifics (same way I condensed Syria, Yemen, and Operation Condor in the article).
Thanks for the feedback, and I think you raised some very valid points.
Hi Ben,
I just thought you gave the Peace Prize Committee too much credit, they are much more devious at creating war propaganda than one would think at first look.
The Nobel Committee has carried water for the liberal wing of the US empire for decades now. And they are far more effective when they create the foundations for humanitarian wars than when they give it to obvious warmongers.
Just look at the 2018 winner, Nadia Murad, “for her efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict” -I’m sure she is sincere girl who has suffered horrible things, but giving that award to her oh-so-sneakily happens to create moral/propaganda support for the NATO war in Syria, and also NATO’s claim to be the “champion of women’s rights” (really!)
One can go back and analyze most of the award winners in similar ways, definitely including Suu Kyi.
You nailed it. The Committees job is to promote a narrative. Nothing more.
I think you are mostly correct. However, I used the example of MLK because it clearly goes against that narrative. While King was a zionist, he was also strongly against US imperialism. He was not only against the Vietnam War, but he was also vocally against military Keynesianism and militarism in general. One might even theorize that King was assassinated not because of his politics on race, but because he was bringing out massive multi-racial working class crowds to oppose the war in Vietnam.
What I am trying to say is that I don’t know if I would draw a one to one comparison between organizations like the NED or the FDD (which are literally State Department backed) and the Nobel Peace Prize. But, there is clearly a lot of western imperialist influence in the Peace Prize Committee. I should not have made it sound like it’s 50/50 in the article. It clearly swings in favor of western imperialism. That was a mistake on my part.
Prestigious awards like the Nobel Peace Prize are often given to the most ignominious. Empires use award ceremonies to propagandize citizenry. If a “champion” of a war is honored the government is saying their militarism should not be perceived as an imperialist crime, but as a nationalistic celebration. In other words, Empires honor the most hideous murderers as a way to give cover to the Empires own psychopathic deeds, and most importantly to encourage others to follow in these murderous footsteps.
The disinformation perpetuated by an award ceremony like the Nobel Peace Prize is merely another way to manipulate public sentiment to accept unjustifiable militarism. After all, would a normal society honor a genocidal murderer.
Kissinger and Barack Obama are war criminals who enhanced the hegemonic power of the Empire–these types of individuals are earnestly celebrated. On the other hand, journalists like Julian Assange and whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning are typically imprisoned for revealing hideous war crimes that the Nobel Peace Prize is intended to conceal.
I think the major problem is that humanity thinks that prizes should only be awarded to people they know.
I mean: in reality, the real hard work of brokering peace, often over years or a couple of decades, is almost always done by people we do not hear about.
I bet almost no Americans know of the role of Patrick Mayhew in brokering peace in Northern Ireland: they will assume it was just Clinton and Blair. Mayhew was every bit as important when a Minister in the Major Government, he just was not an avaricious publicity seeker like Blair. And because he was not the one signing an Agreement, rather a man getting things going and moving toward real progress, he is written out of history by propagandists.
Peace cannot be brokered by swanning in and saying a few fancy words.
When trust has gone and bodies have been strewn around, fancy words mean little. Peace seekers will be judged by their actions, not their words; their resilience, not their oratory; their formulation of small incremental steps, not grand gestures.
The problem with the modern world is that soundbites long ago replaced substance.
And money making amoral gangsters use such soundbites to further their own looting and plunder, applauding such nonsense as Bloomberg promising to ‘save the world from Putinism.’
The world needs saving from US barbarism, pure and simple. Yes, plenty of other violence occurs, but no nation since 1945 has been more violent, over a longer period of time, than the USA.
A US movement which neutered the MIC, oversaw a decade when the US did not sponsor a single coup nor use financial terrorism, weather warfare, bioweaponry nor depleted uranium would be the first US body worthy of a Global Peace Prize.
If such a movement exists, it has no commanding media presence, no political power and certainly no track record to speak of.
Which does suggest that any 20 somethings seeking to bring peace to the world from the USA know where they should start.
And they are most likely to succeed if the goal at the end is enhancing the lives of others, not seeking £1m from a Nobel Peace Prize.
Good comment! I agree. There is no more to add.
Absolutely. But the people who make the Nobel decisions, being themselves “distinguished”, really ought to know better than “humanity’, and dig a little deeper than ”the people they know”. That’s where the failure lies. Just as the people who decide on the Eurovision Song Contest winner know little-to-nothing about music and song in general, yet consider themselves fit to judge… It’s just more media and advertising – our worst enemies.
Obama even gave his acceptance speech about the necessity of war.
I agree on Kissinger and O’Bomber. But like some of the other commenters here, I would caution the author against reflexively accepting any MSM narratives on Burma. There are other, more convincing theories out there as to why Aung San Suu Kyi–once the darling of the brie and chablis set–has suddenly fallen out of favor in the West. Burma, for example, has become very close to China in recent years, making their country into a key node for the New Silk Road venture that Beijing is going to be rolling out. That may be why Washington & Friends no longer like her so much.
You can see what went on in Myanmar from the garb worn by Rohingya women in the refugee camps. Full, black, head to toe, covering including the face. Wahhabism mobilised by the Sordid Barbaria despotism working with the USA and Israel, to attack a neighbour of China.
I would not be surprised if British / Saudi infiltration (including also infiltration of Uyghur and Central Asian jihadis travelling on fake Turkish passports through Southeast Asia in deliberately roundabout journeys on their way to Syria) into some Rohingya Muslim refugee camps started once the Myanmar government began moving closer to China to try to attract investment and to be included in the Belt and Road Initiative (Silk Road renamed).
BTW this comment in no way implies that I have any affection for Aung San Suu Kyi: she appears to be quite the opportunist leader, willing to use the support of the extremist Buddhist 969 movement (the Myanmar equivalent of the Banderite Nazis in Ukraine) and its leader Wirathu when this suited her.
While there is ambiguity about British / Saudi infiltration into Myanmar, there is not a second of doubt about their infiltration into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The latter two governments are countering this while the former wants more of those funds / training.
Pakistan was the first well known CIA – Jihadi experiment with their operation Cyclone, started before the USSR entered Afghanistan.
Can Trump in a second term make the US MIC break that poisonous addiction?
Thanks for the feedback, I wrote this article, let me explain why I think you are wrong.
I don’t completely disagree. There is credible evidence of Saudi funding Rohingya groups (rebels/terrorists whatever) in Rakhine State. I mentioned that in the piece. I could believe the CIA being involved in that as well. There is no confirmed evidence in this case, but Saudi is often a laundering front for the CIA. And the US is absolutely trying to stop the Belt and Road project, especially in Africa (the US was behind the South Sudan Civil war).
But there is no evidence of a program even 5% as big, as say the train and equip program in Syria (Mynamar’s military would be happy to show the world if they were finding massive weapons stock piles).
And you could theorize that the west is faking the death counts. But unless the Bangladesh government is in on the western disinformation, you can’t fake refugee numbers. All of them are Rohingya, and there is very little evidence of deaths to Myanmar’s military, except the initial attacks by Rohingya groups on security checkpoints at the start. This suggests an ethnic cleansing project, not a civil war. It appears to be very one-sided. Also, I would argue that this was a ticking time bomb waiting to happen, it’s been going in cycles since the 1950s. It did not pop out of no where recently.
If you want to stop a pipeline what you would do is create a sustained civil war with large, constant streams of funding. This is what happened in Syria (well Syria is very complicated and is about A LOT of things not just 1 or 2 issues). But one motive was to stop the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline which was a threat to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline monopoly.
Also, the stories like “throwing babies into fires” and “soldiers mass raping women” are mostly coming from refugees in Bangladesh, not from Rohingya living in the west. This may be relevant because expats living in the west are more likely to be tied to disinformation campaigns (example: some Iranian expats in America)
Also, I found in my research that Aung San Suu Kyi was always a right wing ultra-nationalist that was propped up by western “democracy” lovers in the media. It didn’t just come out of no where. There is a solid 36 page document that extensively details the funding campaigns that the UK and the US spent shaping the image of Suu Kyi and her movement. Suu Kyi and her movement received massive amounts of money from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). For those that don’t know the NED is a major regime change arm of the US. It’s an extension of the State Department and that’s where it gets its money.
Just my 2 cents
But the question remains: Why did the Western Establishment–the exact same one that had helped her into power in the first place–suddenly turn against her? What did she do (or fail to do) that suddenly soured them on her? Call me a cynic, but I have trouble believing that it’s because she proved to be ‘insufficiently democratic’ or whatever.
As far as her being a nationalist is concerned:
1.) I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Wasn’t Ho Chin Min a nationalist? And how about Fidel Castro?
2.) It shouldn’t have come as any shocker to foreign policy experts on Burma anyway. After all, Aung San Suu Kyi was raised as a nationalist. Her own father led the country to independence from the British Empire back in the 60s, and paid for it with his life.
Thanks for the response brother! I’m happy to elaborate. Being a nationalist is not a bad thing. I consider myself a nationalist. I love ALL people in my country (United States), and I don’t want them to get sent overseas to get their limbs blown off. I’m a white person with Christian upbringing, but I stick up for all people in my country: black people, Muslims, Jews, latinos, etc. My view is that we are all in this together as a nation, regardless of skin color, religion, etc.
I believe that Suu Kyi is an ethnic nationalist. It’s like what you see with Richard Spencer in the US or the Likud Party in Israel. Ethnic nationalism is bound to lead to disastrous results. And let’s be clear, the NED (US State Department cut out) knew they were backing an ethnic nationalist. This happens all the time with US “democracy” operations.
You raise a very fair point in asking why they turned on her. But let me ask you this…why hasn’t the ICC indicted her yet like they did with Omar al Bashir in Sudan?
Why hasn’t the US been lobbying for sanctions on Myanmar like they did with Iran and Iraq? Why isn’t there a massive funding stream going to terrorists in Rakhine State? If you are actually a threat to the US MIC then there are a million ways to fuck with you. We don’t even have to get into Syria. I alluded to the US starting the civil war in South Sudan. They did that to an ally for the crime of doing business with China. John Bolton and Nicki Haley have called Kiir a war criminal at the UN (as they backed him via the State Department ironically). Why are they using kids gloves with Suu Kyi?
And when you fall out of favor with the US what follows is often a terrorist insurection. Is there really any evidence that the Rhohinga or the Uighers are being persecuted. Seems these groups have been recruited to stir up trouble and then are used as a victim card against the targetted nation. Or does one forget about Uighers recruited to do regime change in Syria.
I was mostly with this article until this line:
There was no genocide of Tutsis by Hutus in Rwanda. There was an organised genocide of Hutus and Twa by Tutsis and some desperate attempts by Hutus to resist mass murder. This can no longer be plausibly denied.
If anyone here needs more info on the Rwandan Genocide psy-op, start with this: https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/15/the-official-rwanda-story-unravels/
The great Edward S Herman nailed that lie years ago. The genocidaire of Rwanda was none but Kagame, the US asset trained at Fort Leavenworth.
I wrote this article, and I’m sorry, but you are incorrect. Every African I know that lived in Rwanda or the Democratic Republic of the Congo says it was Hutu on Tutsi massacres.
The Hutus were backed by imperialist countries: France, the UK, and Israel. That’s why no one that carried out the genocide has ever been held accountable. If it was the other way around, as you claim, then the International Criminal Court would have indicted scapegoats. Millions died in the Congo/Rwanda. 300,000 died in Darfur via Omar al Bashir. The only one that got indicted by the International Criminal Court was Bashir. Not because he was objectively worse, but because he was buddy-buddy with Iran and China.
Actually you are not wrong. That was very dismissive. The US did manipulate the narrative to serve their interests in the Congo, and they backed leaders that carried out mass murder in the Congo following the refuge crisis. But it was Hutu on Tusti violence in Rwanda.
The Nobel Prizes are like the Oscars or the BAFTAs, a nauseating display of mutual admiration and mutual backscratching by the self obsessed gutter elite of war criminals, pathological liars, hypocrites and thieving oligarchs who lord it over us.
Nobel himself was just polishing a turd to try to salvage his own reputation by setting up the Prizes.
The only appropriate response is to treat the whole tawdry, degrading spectacle with a suitable combination of contempt and derision.
Trump seemed to be angling for a Nobel Prize himself, to rival Obomber. In the Clown World we live in, he is quite likely to get one, provided he starts a few wars and murders a sufficient number of people.
Obomber himself seems to have been awarded his prize, not for anything he had done, but on the off chance that he might possibly do something worthwhile some time in the future.
I think that I should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. I’m going to write a really superb novel in ten years’ time, so they might as well give it to me now.
The whole dog and pony show is more than a little bit pathetic. It’s like young children playing house and awarding each other titles.
They should be replaced with other titles awarded by popular acclaim. “Turd Of The Year”, “Hypocrite Of The Year”, “Lying Scumbag Of The Year”, “Murdering Bastard Of The Year”, “Thieving C**t Of The Year”, could substitute for the 5 Nobel Prizes.
And the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize is ……………………THE WHITE HELMETS!!!
(Cue rapturous applause.)
https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2015/04/30/vietnam_war_the_critical_role_of_russian_weapons_42917
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-dynamite-1991564
what’s wrong with New Brighton?
Interesting that St Greta (or rather her dodgy manipulators, including her dodgy parents) has set up a foundation, part of whose function is to accept the proceeds of prizes like this, and other prizes. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, but didn’t get it. Unfortunately for poor little Greta, the nasty committee decided (for a change) to give it to someone who had actually worked for peace, rather than to someone politically fashionable.
Don’t give up though, Greta girl: there is always 2020. And you’ll have, what, 9 more years to try for it, before you (or your manipulators) tell us the world will end?
No, they’d better give it to her now, or at least over the next four years. She’s only got 4 years to save the planet. Otherwise it’ll be too late. In fact I think we’re down to 3 years and 6 months now.
I agree that Greta looks awfully like she is being manipulated, but her message is UNDENIABLE. That message is also NOT that the world will end in 2030 (it could end for humanity well before that)but that we must reverse our course of burning fossil fuels by 2030, or catastrophic climate destabilisation will be unavoidable, As for me, I believe the science says that it is already too late, and the 2030 ‘deadline’ is just another delaying tactic, kicking the can down the road a bit.
The problem is whether Greta Thunberg is being used as a gatekeeper to help corral the response to her message into directions that might offer plausible solutions for the herds to follow but which in the long term end up punishing us ordinary mugs across the world while letting the elites off the hook and/or even benefiting them financially.
Certainly plane travel has long been problematic for its use of fossil fuels but a plane carrying 100+ people on long distance flights in a working life-time of some 10 years seems to me a better use of energy than a yacht on renewable energy used by a billionaire to entertain his /her rich pals or to ferry Miss Thunberg across the North Atlantic every time she misses her train or a flight because some conference switches venue from Chile to Spain or wherever. (To say nothing of the raw materials or the huge amounts of water that go into building passenger jets or solar / electrically powered yachts.)
The Hate Greta movement is just a denialist diversion from reality. Ignore Greta, but for God’s sake accept and understand her message-the hour is getting very, very, late. seconds to midnight.
Imagine, putting your own daughter on the world stage as a therapy, making money of it and possibly prizes: only in Sweden. Malena Emman and husband were simply too busy in Grata’s youth, but now they are making up, over our backs.
Busy during Greta’s youth? More like wasting their time, at least in Sara Malena’s case.
‘Sometimes its distributors get it right and sometimes they get it wrong.’
I disgree they ALWAYS get it wrong. As anything based on military wealth would. And picked by secretive commitee process not a popular vote of even their citizens.
Gandhi never got it
Suu Kyi did effect a transfer from military junta to herself and was rewarded by the award, but then betrayed her ‘western’ backers interest by making nicey with China and so lost it.
The Malala ‘schoolgirl’ was a set up. They couldn’t quite gratioutesly hand it to ‘little Greta’ last time – but she will eventually
Obama got his on STARTINGH his presidency! For saving the bankers and awarding them trillions and setting off on even more warmongering knowing his legacy as prize winner would be secured – he certainly wouldn’t have been able to get it popularly today based on his record.
Any actual deserving winner would spit in their faces and refuse to take it!
Sartre did. Which was one of the good things that Sartre did (although I am not a big fan of Sartre…)
Sartre was for Literature, and he refused to accept it.
I think Su Kyi is being targeted for a bit of Regime Change. The ungrateful little satrap has been doing deals with China and joining the BRI, so she has to be slapped down and put in her place.
I don’t know what to make of the Rohingya story. It may be true, but it could be another Syrian Gas Hoax, or another “100,000 massacred Kosovans”, or another “one million Uighurs in concentration camps” used to justify some sanctions and a spot of humanitarian bombing.
There is a long history of various ethnic and minority groups in Burma being in conflict with the central government and receiving CIA support when this serves the interests of the Empire. It pays to be sceptical about anything being peddled by Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch.
Chewy Bono.
Paul don’t really want to go deep into religious fundamentalism in Buddhism – just say it has a long history of fascism/puritanical superiority amongs it’s many many versions which sprang from the original story of the Gautama.
The Tibetans were no saints either!
Don’t forget the golden triangle has been a major cash industry for a VERY long time too.
When it comes to the Burmese variety the Rohingya and various hill tribes aten’t the only victims.
Anti-muslim Buddhists have been terrorising across the whole country for years – being a pillar of the state through all its junta phase.
A good overview from an old AJ story.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2013/05/201352973111407914.html
Basically a liitle bald guy in an orange robe with a bowl and a grin is best avoided (as I believe Terry Pratchett once wrote).
I’ve visited 2 Buddhist temples but I must admit I hadn’t a clue what is was all about. Very nice people and beautiful buildings. Hopefully it isn’t as bloodthirsty as its Talmudic/ Biblical/ Koranic counterparts, but who knows.
I heard that monks were doing a lucrative sideline in predicting lottery numbers and engaging in a lot of Harvey Weinstein type activity with female worshippers, amongst other things.
The Tibetan theocrats were very nassty despots.
No joke! The Nobel is starting to turn into the international equivalent of a knighthood.
“Henry Kissinger won the award in 1973 for his “efforts” to conclude the Vietnam War. What a joke”.
Weird as it seems, getting a Nobel Peace prize today, seems to indicate that you are a complete utter Bastard…..Kissinger’s NPP was a crime against humanity. As the Architect of the “Vietnam War”(or the American War, as it is known in Vietnam) Kissinger famously is quoted, “Military men are just Dumb Stupid Animals, to be used as pawns in Foreign Policy”….
“I refuse to believe that a little fourth rate Power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point”….Henry Kissinger
And, President Obama, got a NPP in 2009 for “Who knows”? And while he was President attacked a Medicines San Frontieres(winners of the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize) hospital in Afghanistan
It should be binned just like the New Brighton swimsuit competition of my youth
America preparing for “peace”:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/02/24/nuke-f24.html
Perhaps Mel Brooks should win it?:
One of Mel Brooks best comedies “The Producers”:)
https://youtu.be/1zY1orxW8Aw
Brooks was no doubt referring to Hitler but he could have made a referral to another country by adding “a little bit of Syria, a little bit of Palestine (actually ALL of Palestine), a little bit of Egypt, but all I want is peace”.
Add to that ALL of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
And parts of Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
‘ It’s very simple. The Nobel Peace Prize is just like most other awards. Sometimes its distributors get it right and sometimes they get it wrong.’
IMO they more often get it wrong than chance permits. And people like Obama and Kissinger should have never received a peace prize, if chance was taken into account, similar as that the chance of snow in hell is 0.
Actually, you can test this
First, look at all the Nobel peace prize winners, and calculate how many of them were or became warmongers. My guess: 10%.
Then look at all those who didn’t win a Nobel peace prize and how many of those are warmongers. My guess, close to 0%, say 0.1% percent
Than calculate the risk of the Nobel committee selecting a warmonger, which is 10/0,1=100 fold increased risk
Now you can also do the same for the Nobel prize peace, where the winners were really peaceful. Martin Luther King comes to mind and Gandhi (not sure if he won a Nobel), but these people are icons only, and only received a prize when their views were fashionable (when they became non-fashionable they were assasinated). But let’s say it’s 2% correct.
Then look at all the people around you who are peaceful and are doing good work for peace: that is IMO close to 50% (maybe even higher, because peaceful people are usually not making a big deal about what they are doing, so I may have missed then). Then the risk of that the Nobel peace committee gets is it right is 2/50=0,04 or a 25 fold decreased risk.
These are just some simple back of the envelope equations, and it’s advisable to use them before believing the eloquence of journalists who may or may not be sincere in their judgment, but who, like the committtee of the Nobel Peace Prize suffer from being biased towards the hand that feeds them.
Philip Tetlock has written about this (why political experts are always wrong), for which you can find more info here: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/29991
With apologies for the typos
I can’t agree with some of this. Foreign policy achievements of Obama should be noted for balance but leaving out Libya.?
Also the analysis on Syria comes across as what you often see by some commentators and reads like ‘ Assad is a brutal dictator but others also to blame’. My view, the attack then, and continuance of western powers of destabilising the country is pure evil and should be analysed in that context.
And Burma, while I am open to learning more, this analysis seems to accept a mainstream media narrative that one side holds the overwhelming responsibility. That may be the case, I would need far more convincing.
I’m all for balance but I think the author may be falling into the trap some of us have fallen into on our learning journey. Being right in correcting the myths of Obama and other leaders in the West – but partially accepting mainstream media premises in order to appear ‘ balanced’.
Syria was targeted for destruction by the Neocons and in their cross hairs from at least the 1990s, one of 7 countries to be attacked in 5 years to serve Zionist interests.
Britain’s SAS was active in training terrorists in Turkey and Jordan for years before the actual troule started in Syria. “Opposition activists” were being trained and lavishly bankrolled. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was involved in similar shenanigans in Iran for “BBC Media Action.”
Libya is simple. The country with the highest position in Africa on the UN Human Development Index, bombed to the Stone Age, killing 50,000 and still a Hell on Earth. All to install a bunch of jihadist vermin, the USA and the West’s long-term allies in genocide and destruction from Myanmar, Xinjiang, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq, to Algeria and Mali. Another triumph for really existing ‘Western Moral Values’.
Hey I wrote this article, and I’m happy to explain. Syria is EXTREMELY complicated. There is an Israeli motive (which is the CIA’s motive), a Saudi motive, a Qatari motive, a Turkish motive, an Iranian motive, and a Russian motive (and more). WE can go through them one by one, but it’s a little bit exhausting. People want to tell simple stories, but in the case of Syria, it is just not that. You can talk about the BTC monopoly, breaking up supply lines to Lebanon, weakening Iran, annexing Northern Syria, balkanizing Syria, Qatari-Turkey pipeline, etc. There is a lot to know about Syria.
I left out Libya because for the sake of word count. I completely agree with you. I also could have brought up how under Obama the US created a proxy war in South Sudan that killed 400,000 people. That was worse than Libya.
Myanmar is complicated, but all indicators point to it being an ethnic cleansing project. It’s not the same as the disinformation campaign on Syria. If you want to I can explain how I know this, put it takes a lot of explaining.
My favourite Piss Prize swine is the compradore racist, Liu Xiaobo, who declared that the Chinese would ‘..never be fully human’ until they Westernised. He recommended 300 years of colonial tutelage to achieve this noble ambition. No wonder the Nordic fascists who bestow this stinking pile of ordure loved him so much.
The author forgot that those “nice” Rohingya themselves killed many local Hindus in Myanmar. Not that they are intrinsically bad, they just follow a violent Book to the letter.
For me Aung San Suu Kyi did what she could with her limited powers.
Sure, this Nobel Peace prize became a political tool ages ago and is now more a biscuit for well behaving puppies and puppets, distributed by Norwegian naives, clowns and jokers.
You mean like the Book of Deuteronomy?
https://brill.com/view/title/34280?lang=en
Deuteronomy was fabricated by King Josiah.
Well ya. They committed mass genocide against the Canaanites then claim god made ’em do it. Same thing here in the America’s which became known as “New Canaan” they justified it later with “Manifest Destiny”. Funny how these genocidal maniacs justify their crimes against humanity as “god’s will” after the fact.
The Old Testament is bloody but is surpassed by the Koran and Mein Kampf – two birds of a feather.
They are all like kiddies’ fairy stories compared to the Talmud. Nothing can beat that in the Bloodthirsty Stakes.
As I noted, but apparently only Islamophobic comments are allowed, Antsie’s tribe also have violent Books by the gross, many of which they share with ‘Christians’, that advocate extreme violence and brutality, including genocide, against the hated ‘others’.
Funny how he and other Islamaphobes claim that the Quran is a “book of violence” yet if it was a Hollywood movie it would get a PG rating compared to the Bible, the Torah and Talmud which would each get an X rating for sex and violence.
We can also do away with the ‘honours list’ – and the hypocrites and parasites that bestow such inanities – the days of valour are long gone. . . . . . .
Here’s a few more Nobel “Peace” Prize Winners with the year they won:
Theodore Roosevelt in 1906–joyfully killed about everything he could. Loved war. Murdered countless animals for fun.
Woodrow Wilson in 1919–voted into office to keep America out of the Great War. Went to war anyway.
George C. Marshall in 1953–started his imperialist career by murdering Filipinos who had the audacity to want independence. Continued murdering people in every war he could find.
Shimon Peres in 1994–he was at the forefront of the first weapon sales between the U.S. and Israel in the early 1960s. Involved in murdering Palestinians and Egyptians earlier than that. Was the President of Israel during the Gaza Massacres of 2008-2009, and 2012.
Funny the author doesn’t say anything about Benghazi and Libya. Probably one of the most egregious acts of terrorism ever carried out by the North Atlantic Terrorist Organization ever since the “Humanitarian Bombing” of Serbia. Lest we forget Ukraine that made the ‘mistake” of being on too friendly terms with Moscow and Honduras that had the temerity to establish a democratic government that was actually democratic.
Of course we can’t completely blame Obama since it was Secretary Clinton when she wasn’t typing on her unsecured Blackberry was mostly responsible for these catastrophes but giving Clinton that much power is like a bar tender tossing the car keys to a drunk driver.
Yeah, I had the same reaction. Certainly, the needless and criminal destruction of Libya had to have had his approval, as well as the coup in Ukraine. I did notice in his campaign to be president that he always spoke about ‘hope we can believe in’ or ‘change we can hope for’, sweeping positive generalizations like that, but details or specifics were never given about what he actually meant.
Now, I could care less what he thinks and I am glad he is out of office (thank God for the 2 term limits!).
Yep Obama left ya hoping for change that never happened. Catchy slogans such as “Hope and Change” and “MAGA” that are tossed aside as soon as the incumbent’s sorry ass gets elected.
Hey Gall I wrote this article and you are completely correct, particularly in regards to Libya. Obama got pushed into the bombing campaign, that was mostly France and the UK with Hillary Clinton facilitating that nonsense, but Obama authorized weapons to be delivered by the CIA, laundered through Qatar State Security, that went to Al Qaeda linked groups in Libya like the LIFG. I just did not have time to fit that in the piece. I explain the pipeline here: http://oneworld.press/?module=articles&action=view&id=1244
Out of office, but not out of power (to reverse the cliché). Doing his best to stop Bernie.
The only Change anybody ever got out of Obongo was Chump Change.
Here is what World Socialist Web Site had to say about another Nobel Peace Prize winner, Martti Ahtisaari back in October 2008:
Martti [Ahtisaari]: Advocate of imperialist intervention awarded Nobel Peace Prize
An excerpt from the article:
And in representing the EU while making peace negotiations with then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and getting him to accept NATO terms to end the violence and conflict in 1999, did Ahtisaari really threaten Milosevic with carpet-bombing Belgrade? (You’ll need Google Translate to read the article at the link.)